Emotional Shannon Noll Reveals The Truth Behind What Happened To His 'Idol' Money

"If we fail again, we're gone"

Lucy O'D

2018-02-19T23:34:10Z

Channel 10

Last night on 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here', Shannon Noll opened up about what truly happened to all his winnings from Australian Idol back in 2003.

Whilst sitting around the camp, a chat with fellow contestant Fiona O’Loughlin soon turned into an emotional conversation about his time when he was still living at the family farm.

The country boy explained that for years, their farm had been struggling with debt due to one of the country’s most destructive droughts.

“We tried to farm our way out [of debt], and the next two years we failed because of the drought... So that cost 40 or 50 grand at a time for fuel and feed and that sort of thing," he revealed to Fiona.

“We went further into debt so we had a family meeting and said: 'If we fail again we’re gone', so we had just enough money to buy another house and I went on Idol and it all blew up from there. A few creditors were left over and they [had] seen me on the show and chased mum really hard for the shortfall. I wrote a cash cheque out for $209,000 to a tractor company".

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a farmhand, I’d never run a business before so I paid a lot of those debts out and consequently all the big money I made after the show, I paid bills with it. I didn’t blow it on yachts and all that sort of stuff.”